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What's

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good y'all? You are listening to Code Switch, the

0:20

show about race and identity from NPR. I'm

0:22

Gene Demby. On this episode,

0:25

trying to find your place as a Christian when

0:27

your church doesn't love you back.

0:34

If you've

0:35

listened to us at all over the last couple years, you've heard us

0:37

cite this nonpartisan polling company

0:39

called the Public Religion Research Institute, like

0:41

a lot. You know that stat we always throw out about how 75%

0:44

of white folks don't have any friends who

0:46

aren't white? That stat comes from

0:48

them. And they've looked extensively

0:51

at the racial attitudes of one of the most

0:53

influential religious populations in

0:56

this country, white evangelicals.

0:58

At

1:00

the Public Religion Research Institute, they

1:02

did this big survey, they called it the

1:04

Structural Racism Index, where

1:07

they ranked respondents on how likely

1:09

they were to agree with statements like, quote,

1:12

Today, discrimination against white Americans has

1:14

become as big a problem as discrimination

1:17

against black Americans and other minorities,

1:19

end quote. White evangelical respondents,

1:22

they ranked higher than any other

1:24

group on the racism index. And

1:27

as you might imagine, that makes that population

1:29

very distinct from

1:30

the many, many, many black Christians

1:32

in this country, like my colleague, JC

1:35

Howard. He works on the show, How I Built This,

1:37

you've probably heard of it. But over the last few months, he's

1:39

been reporting on the stories of black Christians,

1:41

and in particular, those like

1:44

him for a time, who found their spiritual

1:46

homes in white evangelical

1:49

churches.

1:52

Welcome to Code Switch, JC. Thanks so much,

1:54

Gene, glad to be here. Okay, so black Christian

1:57

is a category that includes people like you, it

1:59

includes people like me. I grew up in black Catholic

2:01

parishes. I was an altar boy, I even had a

2:03

stint as an abstinence only speaker, which

2:05

I'm not gonna talk about, but you, it's

2:09

not about me, it's about you. You grew up Pentecostal,

2:11

right? Yeah, I grew up in

2:13

the Church of God in Christ, which is a black

2:16

Pentecostal denomination, yeah. Okay, so kojic,

2:18

the kojic folks, this is what I know about y'all. I

2:20

think of people speaking in tongues, that's

2:23

not something we did as Catholics. And the kojic

2:25

girls that I'm with at school with, they were

2:27

not allowed to wear pants, so I'm sorry, I'm gonna add distinctly.

2:29

Yes, that's us, you've got a switchey.

2:33

You know, long church services, we're talking like

2:35

five, six hours sometimes. Dope

2:38

music though, I will say, lots of shouting,

2:41

but it's a very black denomination

2:43

kind of overall, a little more than 80% black

2:46

in the United States. And

2:48

I was pretty much a church kid, and I

2:51

will admit to you kind of in this safe space

2:53

that I also, I did wear a purity

2:55

ring well into my adult years. Wait,

2:58

so can you just describe this purity ring for a second? Oh

3:01

yeah, so it was a ring that I was to wear on

3:03

my ring finger, and it

3:05

said emblazoned in all caps, vow

3:07

of purity on it, and my

3:10

mother gave it to me, I think when I was in middle school. Oh

3:12

wow. Yes, yeah, yeah, and

3:14

I had to sign the little contract, and I

3:17

will say, I took it very seriously. Oh wow,

3:19

okay, okay. And as a kid, most

3:21

kids play dress up or pretend to

3:23

be their favorite TV character, like Power Rangers

3:25

or whatever,

3:26

but I used to gather my family

3:28

in the living room and hold these sort of

3:30

mock church services where I'd deliver

3:32

the sermon, there'd be a choir, it's like I would direct

3:35

the whole thing. So what did baby J.C. preach

3:37

about? What were the warrior definitions?

3:40

I mean, honestly, I

3:42

preached about whatever the arts and crafts

3:44

project we did in kindergarten at my

3:46

Christian school. I even did

3:49

a little voice, you know, and when the storm

3:51

came, the disciples said, wake Jesus

3:53

up, you know, I'd do the whole thing. And you know,

3:55

at the time, like we had an organ in the living room,

3:57

so my brother is like on the organ.

4:00

playing the keys and like I'm you know wait

4:02

Jesus

4:02

up Jesus was asleep in the

4:04

boat top yeah

4:07

exactly there's a lot about the way that I grew up that

4:10

I kind of laugh at you know but but

4:12

I still love and of course

4:14

some parts that just don't quite fit anymore

4:17

so which parts don't fit anymore what

4:19

changed for you yeah so

4:21

as I got older I kind of started her chopping

4:24

which is not something I was encouraged

4:26

to do as a kid like you had your home church and that

4:28

was it but I grew up in the

4:30

Bay Area in Oakland which is really

4:32

diverse so I started trying

4:35

all these kinds of multicultural non-denominational

4:38

churches just kind of trying to find the right fit

4:40

and you know around this time I even started

4:42

going to white evangelical churches

4:46

okay yeah I have some questions

4:48

yeah I figured you might okay so

4:50

what made you

4:51

decide to go to white evangelical churches to begin

4:53

with like that's a big joke yeah I mean

4:56

it was different right but not

4:58

just the environment the the preaching was also

5:00

different and not just the style or

5:02

sound was different but how they preach

5:04

or teach is different when

5:06

I when I got to white evangelical spaces

5:10

that was the first time I was introduced to

5:12

a scholarly side of Christianity

5:15

sometimes a sermon felt like a classroom lecture

5:17

and honestly I kind of liked it right

5:20

like plus it was right around the time I started

5:22

going to college so it's

5:24

kind of that time in your life where you're figuring

5:26

yourself out and just trying new things

5:28

you know some people experiment with drugs I

5:32

experimented with churches Wow boy

5:34

okay I started experimenting with white

5:36

evangelical churches though yeah yeah and I

5:38

think if you asked me at the time I would

5:41

have said that these churches were more intellectual

5:43

spaces now I know

5:46

that that was some of my own ignorance

5:49

of like black theologians like James

5:52

Cohn and Alice Walker and Howard

5:54

Thurman but I just wasn't exposed

5:56

to them at the time like in the church where

5:58

I grew up my pastor was my great uncle. You

6:00

know, he had a high school education

6:03

and he didn't talk much about, you know, the

6:06

Greek words used in the New Testament

6:08

or the context for when and where the book of Job

6:10

was written. And

6:12

I think there might be plenty of black

6:14

churches that do that. But I hadn't

6:16

seen that very much at that point. Okay, but

6:18

JC, JC, going

6:21

from a black Pentecostal tradition to a white evangelical church

6:23

is not like, you know, going to two different

6:25

McDonald's on the opposite side of town. Like they're not

6:27

really serving the same thing, different worship styles.

6:30

I mean, just the music alone. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

6:32

you know, the wardrobe is different. Like the church

6:34

where I grew up, you know, little pastor JC

6:36

would wear a double breasted or a three piece

6:38

suit. Clean! Yeah, of course. Versus,

6:41

you know, the white churches where

6:42

I would go later, you know, the

6:44

pastors wearing jeans. But

6:46

JC, it's not just differences in praise

6:48

and worship styles, right? I mean, like we're talking about big

6:51

political difference, like the different political spheres.

6:53

Yeah.

6:54

I was looking up some stats, right? Like

6:56

according to Pew,

6:58

nine in 10, nine in 10, black

7:01

people who go to church at least once a month voted

7:03

for Joe Biden in 2020. But when it

7:05

comes to white evangelical Christians, 85%

7:08

of white evangelicals who

7:10

go to church at least once a month or Trump voters.

7:12

I mean, so we're talking about big,

7:15

big partisan differences between

7:17

black folks who are Christian and white

7:19

evangelicals. Yeah,

7:21

that's been the other side of white evangelical

7:24

outreach to black folks. There's been

7:26

something of an exodus

7:28

of those black folks who joined white evangelical

7:30

churches since 2016. They've

7:33

really been leaving those spaces. An exodus, huh? Listen,

7:36

I'm a church kid, a little bit of Moses. I appreciate

7:39

it. But seriously, I mean, I left

7:41

those spaces too. And it's

7:43

not just a symptom of 2016 or Trump.

7:45

Exactly. I think in general, it's

7:48

just kind of hard to ignore when

7:50

your race is being ignored. You

7:53

know, Monday through Saturday, you're not

7:55

allowed to forget that you're black. But

7:57

then all of a sudden, it's supposed to be irrelevant

7:59

on some Sunday, like it doesn't work. And

8:02

so I wanted to tell the stories of people on

8:04

a similar trajectory as me, because,

8:07

you know, there are a lot of black folks who are trying to find

8:09

where they belong within the institution of Christianity,

8:12

and who are wrestling with the role of the white

8:14

church in the oppression, not just of our

8:17

ancestors, but in many cases of us.

8:20

With that in mind, I'm going to turn the

8:22

keys to the show over to you. All right.

8:31

So being a Christian has always

8:34

been one of the primary ways that I identify.

8:37

But finding my place in Christianity

8:39

has been a journey from being the little

8:42

black Pentecostal kid playing church in

8:44

the living room to about 10 years ago,

8:46

being the young black man surrounded by

8:48

white evangelicals and beginning to realize

8:51

that this place might invite me

8:53

in, but it wasn't built for me. And

8:57

right in the middle of my own, trying to make sense

8:59

of the ways that I fit in, but was also

9:01

deeply uncomfortable in those spaces. I

9:04

had a conversation with this girl that I liked that

9:07

really challenged my sense of belonging.

9:09

Okay. Tell

9:12

me your name and

9:14

who you are. My name

9:17

is Vika Aronson, and

9:19

I think what you're getting at is I'm your

9:21

wife.

9:22

That is what I'm getting

9:25

at for sure. Okay. But long

9:27

before she was my wife, one night back

9:29

when we were just friends, we were sitting

9:31

in Vika's car outside my apartment in Oakland,

9:34

and she asked me a question.

9:36

I was just like, you

9:41

are a black man

9:43

in America who also

9:46

says you're Christian, you know,

9:48

pretty quickly and strongly.

9:50

That's how you identify.

9:53

And I was like, so

9:56

explain to me how exactly

9:58

that works. and she

10:00

wasn't being snarky. She genuinely wanted

10:02

to know. Vika comes from a Russian

10:05

Jewish family. Both of her parents were born

10:07

in the Soviet Union and she didn't grow

10:09

up around very many, if any, black

10:11

Christians. So this question was

10:13

earnest.

10:14

Because my understanding

10:16

is that black people, along

10:19

with other groups, have been oppressed

10:21

by

10:21

the Christian Bible and by Christianity.

10:25

And

10:26

especially when it comes to enslaved

10:29

Americans, which I think I knew that was

10:31

your ancestry, and you

10:33

had your own religion, pre-slavery,

10:38

and they used Christianity

10:40

to replace what you had before. And

10:44

now you still claim this

10:46

thing as your own religion, despite

10:49

the history of it.

10:50

Yeah. So I think the pickier

10:53

way to say it is, how

10:55

can you hold onto and

10:57

identify with a faith that was

11:00

used to oppress your ancestors

11:02

and people

11:03

like you? I

11:06

had only known Vika for like three months

11:09

and

11:09

she's basically asking me to make a case for

11:11

black Christianity. But as a

11:13

black Christian, this wasn't foreign territory.

11:15

And I liked her, so I wanted to let her in

11:17

on my thought presses. And what I told

11:20

her is that the Bible as I read it is

11:22

basically a series of stories about liberation

11:24

and freedom, and it's highly critical

11:27

of oppressive empires. In the early

11:29

1800s, slaveholders in the West Indies distributed

11:32

a version of the Bible that's now known as the

11:34

Slave Bible, and used it to convert

11:36

enslaved Africans. And in it,

11:38

about 90% of the Old Testament was

11:41

just cut, and about half of the New Testament.

11:44

Any tiny part that they thought might inspire

11:46

rebellion, they were moved. So

11:49

in order to use the Bible to oppress people,

11:52

you basically have to ignore most of it.

11:54

And that's what I told Vika. You

11:56

said, yes,

11:58

it was used as a tool.

11:59

of oppression,

12:01

but

12:03

essentially black folks have learned

12:06

to reclaim Christianity in this liberation

12:11

theology way, this way that's about

12:13

freedom and joy and

12:16

everything that's the opposite

12:20

of oppression, basically.

12:22

Yeah. What'd you think of that answer

12:24

at that time? I liked that answer.

12:29

I was glad she liked that answer, but there

12:31

was something about it that didn't quite sit well

12:33

with me. I mean, I believe

12:35

the answer and I still do, but to some

12:37

degree, I think I didn't trust myself.

12:40

Maybe I was missing something because some

12:42

of those white evangelical spaces

12:44

I was still in at that time, they

12:47

weren't engaging in questions like this.

12:52

I went to white spaces because I thought they took

12:54

a more critical view of scripture, but

12:56

then with this issue, many of them

12:58

lacked any critical awareness. I

13:01

think that's part of why black folks have been leaving

13:03

those spaces. I wanted to talk

13:05

to someone else who, like me, did

13:08

that as well.

13:10

JC has that conversation after

13:13

the break. People wanted a part

13:15

of me because people think there's something

13:17

exotic about black people in

13:19

white space, especially in white Christian space.

13:23

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You're

14:46

listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity

14:48

from NPR. I'm Gene Demby, and

14:50

JC Howard has been reporting

14:53

on the struggle he and some black Christians

14:55

face in trying to find their place within mainstream

14:58

Christian institutions, especially the

15:00

white evangelical variety.

15:03

And as JC was rabbit-holing on this, he

15:06

read the story of another black Christian

15:09

who started off in a very similar place.

15:14

So Dante

15:14

Stewart is an ordained minister and

15:16

an author. He wrote this book called Shouting

15:19

in the Fire. It's part memoir and part

15:21

letter to the Christian church in America. And

15:23

it's all about being black and learning to love

15:25

in an anti-black world. And

15:27

when I picked up his book, it felt

15:29

like I was reading my own autobiography. Dante

15:32

grew up black Pentecostal, started going to

15:34

white evangelical church when he got to college.

15:37

Numbers that explain the economy. We love him at

15:39

the Indicator from Planet Money. And on Fridays,

15:41

we discuss indicators in the news, like

15:44

job numbers,

15:44

spending, the cost of food,

15:47

sometimes all three. So my indicator

15:49

is about why you might need to bring home more bacon

15:51

to afford your eggs. I'll

15:54

be here all week.

15:55

Wrap up your week and listen to the Indicator podcast

15:57

from NPR. And married this girl who

15:59

did not. feel like she belonged in white evangelicalism,

16:02

or understand why he felt so comfortable.

16:04

I mean, page for page, the parallels kept coming.

16:07

So I thought talking to him would allow me to explore

16:10

my own story, but in someone else.

16:12

So I'm interested in what he found when he left

16:14

the tradition of his parents and grandparents, a

16:17

tradition that, for Dante, started

16:19

as a kid,

16:20

back in rural South Carolina, where

16:22

he went to his small, black, Pentecostal

16:24

church every Sunday. Sunday,

16:27

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday

16:30

afternoon, yes. And your family

16:32

was pretty involved at church? Oh, 100%,

16:35

everybody. From my

16:37

media parents to my aunts and uncles to

16:39

my grandparents to cousins to

16:41

friends, pretty much everybody

16:43

was involved in church. What did you think about

16:46

that as a kid? I mean, I

16:48

say that because I grew up in a Pentecostal church

16:50

as well. And if I

16:52

were to describe Pentecostal, I would say that

16:55

it's kind of a charismatic branch, right,

16:57

of Christianity. Indeed, indeed. It emphasizes

16:59

a personal experience with God through

17:02

being filled with the Holy Spirit or

17:05

what we used to call in black church, baptism

17:07

in the Holy Ghost. Oh, yes, by my mind. Which

17:09

was characterized by speaking in tongues.

17:12

And what did you think of

17:14

being a Pentecostal? I mean, there were, I mean,

17:17

listen, when the church got to Hoppin',

17:19

the church was Hoppin'. Oh, 100, and that's

17:21

like it. Yeah, exactly, there was nothing like it.

17:23

But there was some bit of it that was,

17:27

that

17:27

caused my little

17:30

five-year-old soul to be like, what is going on

17:32

here, right? Yeah, so I remember

17:34

as a kid faking speaking in tongues and

17:37

running around church just so I could play the

17:39

drums. So it was like a transactional

17:42

faith. Just to be clear, you would fake

17:44

speaking in tongues because if not,

17:46

you were not allowed to

17:49

be in ministry, so to speak, by playing

17:51

the drums. Oh, 100%, I faked it

17:53

because I really, really, really wanted to play drums. So

17:55

it's like, you know,

17:57

it's a thing, when you pretend, you can't stop pretending.

18:00

until you leave a thing. You know, we

18:03

ate, slept, and breathed Pentecostalism.

18:06

It was literally all we did. Like, it was all

18:08

we knew, and everything was

18:10

judged through

18:13

the litmus tests of what we knew

18:15

and named from the

18:17

Pentecostal church. Like, in order

18:19

to visit another church, you had to ask Bishop

18:21

for permission. You know, in order

18:24

to play sports, you had to ask Bishop

18:26

for permission. And so, like, as

18:28

a kid,

18:29

there was a part of me that was like,

18:32

I don't like this, but

18:35

I don't know how to talk about I don't like it. Yeah.

18:39

And I knew that, like,

18:41

yo, I didn't

18:43

want to be in that space

18:46

forever. Like, something about this space

18:49

just isn't right.

18:51

Eventually, you wound

18:54

up attending predominantly

19:01

white megachurch. I want

19:03

you to just give me the steps of how you

19:05

ended up there. Like, you know, you grew

19:07

up in this kind of small, regional

19:10

area of South Carolina, going to

19:12

black church, eating, sleeping, breathing

19:14

Pentecostalism. What

19:16

were the steps that ended up getting

19:19

you to a white, like, white

19:21

spaces? Where did that start?

19:25

It started at Clemson, 100%. Clemson

19:29

University, a school that's almost 80% white.

19:32

When Dante got there, he tried to find

19:34

ways to feel like he belonged. So

19:36

he joined the football team and the Clemson FCA,

19:39

or the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which he

19:42

describes as a white evangelical campus

19:44

group. He also started playing the drums

19:46

for the gospel choir on campus, which is where

19:48

he met his future wife, Jasmine.

19:51

I distinctively remember wanting

19:54

to show up because she was there. So

19:56

there was a little bit of, like, connection, but it was

19:58

also a little bit, like, love.

19:59

I love to bro. So gospel choir rehearsal

20:02

was on Thursday nights and we would practice,

20:04

I think for like an hour and then straight

20:07

from there, I would go to FCA

20:10

weekly meeting, which was like

20:13

the polar opposite of what

20:15

I came from. There were no gospel songs there.

20:17

It was like acoustic guitars, big

20:20

stage, big lights and

20:22

way more white people than I ever been

20:24

around in my life. Yeah.

20:27

What appealed to you about those spaces?

20:30

It's kind of that you can get lost in there and it was just

20:32

something different. It felt enough

20:35

like home, but different enough. I

20:37

didn't feel like I had to read the Bible.

20:40

I didn't feel like I had to speak in tongues. I didn't

20:42

feel like I had to be something to somebody

20:44

else that I wasn't. It

20:46

was simple. Really in some sense,

20:49

I really

20:49

didn't have to think that much, you know,

20:52

in a sense of like, yo, they're trying to get you to

20:54

like trust in Jesus.

20:57

And the thing is like, that's

20:59

all you hear about is Jesus, Jesus,

21:02

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,

21:04

Jesus. It allows you to

21:06

forget about everything else.

21:10

["Jazz Man from the Gospel

21:13

Choir"] After

21:17

college, Dante

21:18

marries Jasmine from the gospel choir and

21:20

the two of them moved to Monterey, California and

21:23

start going to a mostly white church there. Dante

21:26

is far from home for the first time in his life and

21:28

he's feeling kind of lonely. Jasmine

21:31

is in the military and is spending a lot of time with

21:33

her responsibilities there, but Dante,

21:35

he really pours himself into their white

21:37

evangelical church. By that

21:39

time, I was already kind of like sold out for white

21:41

evangelicalism.

21:43

You know, it allowed me to, I

21:45

don't know, recreate, reinvent myself,

21:47

bro.

21:48

And so you're getting, I'm

21:51

sure, more and more attention. I've

21:53

spent some time in white evangelical spaces

21:55

and one of the things that you've said

21:58

is that, you know, you're there for what?

21:59

you can offer, right? Facts. Facts.

22:02

Like, you know, there's this opportunity, you'll be a great

22:04

guy to lead this thing, or you'll be a great

22:06

guy to do this, you know. People wanted

22:08

a part of me, because there was something

22:10

like, so many people think there's something exotic

22:13

about, like, black people in white space,

22:15

especially in white Christian space.

22:17

Jasmine is not very excited

22:19

about this particular church, or the kind of

22:21

person they're asking Dante to be.

22:23

But Dante finds a place to belong,

22:25

and he starts to get more involved. Volunteering,

22:29

getting small groups, and even seeking mentorship

22:31

in that church.

22:33

You know, I became a person

22:35

that, like, went full all in,

22:37

and

22:38

I had become one of them. So

22:41

I mean, your family back home in South

22:43

Carolina, how

22:46

did they see this, like, newfound

22:48

Dante, right? This newfound culture that

22:50

you're kind of clinging to? Like,

22:52

I mean, I could imagine your

22:55

mother, grandmother, father, you know, grandfather

22:57

saying, like, look,

22:59

at least he's in church. Or maybe

23:01

not. Maybe it was painful for them. Did that cause

23:03

tension? I think it was most painful

23:06

for my mama. You

23:09

know, my mom is the type of

23:11

woman

23:12

who tried to protect us from a lot,

23:15

that this white world forces

23:18

young black people to endure. My

23:20

mom invested a lot in us, and she

23:22

gave us a lot. You know, and

23:25

so she felt it intensely. I

23:27

read at a certain point that you called your mom

23:29

and you expressly told her that

23:33

black Pentecostals are wrong. Yeah,

23:36

it was a very sad conversation because she felt like she

23:38

was losing her son. Because

23:42

I was basically telling her that everything you gave

23:44

us was wrong. What did you think

23:46

that black Pentecostals were doing wrong? I

23:53

just felt like we were just performing

23:56

and not being honest. Yeah.

23:58

As much as the Pentecostal Church gave

24:00

us so much. I believe also

24:02

that the Pentecostal Church I grew up in robbed us

24:05

of, you know, our ability to

24:08

remain open to other people or

24:10

question faith or whatever. You

24:12

know, Black Pentecostalism is taking so

24:15

much away from us. Dante

24:18

was told by his Pentecostal Church as a kid

24:20

who he was supposed to be, but he

24:22

saw the white evangelical church as a blank

24:24

slate,

24:25

a way to figure out who he wanted to be.

24:27

And just as he's settling in,

24:30

he and Jasmine move again, this

24:32

time to Augusta, Georgia. In

24:35

South Augusta, one of the blackest, blackest,

24:37

most beautiful parts of town, you know,

24:39

and I'm now around

24:42

black people again, because like

24:45

my social networks became

24:48

almost exclusively white.

24:52

And in finding himself back among people who look like

24:54

him, suddenly the predominantly white

24:57

faith community he called home started

24:59

to show cracks in the foundation.

25:06

With a catalytic moment, bro, that

25:10

really changed things was

25:12

when, you know,

25:14

Alton and Philando were murdered. Two

25:22

black men are dead after encounters with police

25:24

in Minnesota and Louisiana and social media

25:27

has sent both of their stories. At this time,

25:29

I'm like

25:30

fully in white evangelical

25:32

church. I'm preaching, teaching,

25:34

leading. I'm in seminary

25:37

at this time in the white space. When

25:39

all of this is going down, and

25:41

Philando can still know what to say about his murder and

25:44

the Donald Trump presidency, it's catalyzing

25:47

and it's taking full root in

25:50

white evangelicalism. Dante

25:52

started growing skeptical of the people

25:54

and the institution he was surrounded by. But

25:57

he also spent a lot of time defending

25:58

them and trying to be like them. At

26:01

this point, Dante was working at an enterprise

26:03

rent-a-car and was preparing the first

26:05

Sunday sermon he would get to deliver at his church

26:08

when an interaction with a co-worker caught

26:10

Dante off guard.

26:11

I'm working at an enterprise and I'm

26:14

having this conversation with Michaela, my homie.

26:17

Dante was telling Michaela about the sermon he was

26:19

preparing and about how great his church

26:21

was because they were using a certain

26:23

phrase, racial reconciliation.

26:26

I'm like, yo, I'm talking about racial reconciliation

26:29

because now this was the thing. When

26:31

black people die, it's time to start

26:33

talking about racial reconciliation. In

26:37

the white evangelical spaces. Yeah, in the white evangelical

26:39

spaces that I was in. No time to feel

26:41

anger or hurt or sadness. It's

26:44

time for reconciliation. We've got to move

26:46

forward,

26:47

move past it. We've got to move past it.

26:49

That's where you were. You were telling Michaela

26:51

at enterprise. You were saying, now's

26:54

the time. I laugh at

26:56

it now, but you were serious in that moment. No, no,

26:58

I was very serious. I was like, yo, I'm

27:00

the first black dude to preach at the church. These

27:03

white people are changing. They're great white people. They're

27:05

good white people, et cetera, et cetera.

27:08

My microphone for white evangelicalism is

27:10

real high and real wide and real loud

27:12

at this moment. I'll never forget

27:15

when Michaela, who was sitting in front of

27:17

me, turned around and told me in front of everybody,

27:22

Stu, you don't got a damn

27:24

thing to offer black people. And

27:29

in that moment,

27:31

I head home after that. So I'm mad. I'm

27:33

pissed off. I'm mad. I'm

27:35

black. I know what it means to be black. You're not

27:39

like being black and white space. You're

27:41

always trying to overcompensate your

27:43

blackness while also you don't even understand it

27:46

and you're distancing yourself from it. And

27:49

so then I get home, I'm griping and complaining

27:52

with my wife about what happened. And

27:54

my wife simply tells me, you always

27:57

listen to me. to

28:00

other people when I've been telling

28:02

you this the whole time. And

28:06

bro, it broke my heart because

28:10

it was

28:12

at that moment that I realized

28:14

that

28:16

I probably became something that I don't

28:18

even know and I need to deal

28:21

with it.

28:22

["The The

28:30

And where did you go from

28:32

there? I mean, did you immediately walk

28:35

away from the white evangelical church or did you try

28:37

to try with them and try

28:39

to get them to listen

28:41

and say, like, look, we need to be a damn thing

28:44

for black people. Yeah, bro,

28:46

I tried. Like,

28:48

I never forget me and my friend, my best friend, Never

28:50

Titty. You know, I had tried to

28:53

talk with the pastor meeting after

28:55

meeting after meeting. They

28:58

tried to give us the assurance that the white people

29:00

who were being racist overtly and

29:02

covertly racist were changing.

29:04

When in actuality, bro, like now that I think

29:07

about it, bro, we were

29:09

around white people.

29:15

That probably were the type of people that

29:17

would throw rocks at my daddy. I

29:20

was a friend of white people and around white

29:23

people. That

29:26

blamed every dead

29:28

and dying black person for their death.

29:32

And then that was one hell of a

29:34

revelation, bro. Did

29:37

that revelation, did that make you angry?

29:40

Oh, angry, bro.

29:42

My God, I was enraged. Like,

29:45

I was more than angry. I was liable to

29:47

like fight white people at any given moment.

29:50

It was a moment where like I think

29:53

that like I realized

29:55

that dang, bro, I had been lied to for years.

29:58

And I got to do something to make this right.

29:59

And like,

30:03

I was angry, like enraged

30:06

because I left

30:10

my family for these people. I

30:14

left my friends for these

30:17

people.

30:29

When I say that white Christianity is a problem,

30:32

I'm personally not talking about individuals. I'm

30:35

going back to what Ron Ho-Niebuhr said in 1932 in

30:37

his book More

30:39

Man and More Society, where Ron Ho-Niebuhr suggests

30:42

that no matter how much individual

30:44

white people identify with black people in

30:46

our causes, the white race

30:49

will not unless they're forced to do

30:51

so. What he's saying is that no, it's not

30:53

about like your own individual morality. It's

30:56

about

30:57

what you allow other people to experience in

30:59

the space that both of you exist in. It

31:03

seems

31:04

to me like the problem,

31:07

as you said, isn't with individuals, but it's

31:09

with the institution. Facts. Facts.

31:12

That's the problem. It's the Christianity

31:15

that has been inherited all

31:17

the way from a time of colonialism,

31:21

a Christianity that has learned

31:24

through centuries of

31:26

discipleship and socialization

31:29

that is good

31:31

enough to be around black people, but it's not good enough

31:33

to actually protect and love black people.

31:39

Dante didn't feel like he belonged within white Christianity

31:42

anymore, so that led him to look for something

31:44

that actually spoke to him. And he found it

31:46

when he was given a copy of the book Where Do We Go From

31:49

Here? by Martin Luther King Jr. And

31:51

in it, he came across a passage from James Baldwin's

31:53

book The Fire Next Time.

31:57

It's impossible to read The Fire Next

31:59

Time and actually read

31:59

the fire next time and remain the same in

32:02

your relationship to Christianity or

32:05

at least your relationship to white Christianity. And

32:07

like

32:08

the church was just in my bones

32:10

and in my blood. Faith was

32:13

just in my bones and in my blood. And

32:15

like

32:16

I found a new faith

32:18

in like black literature.

32:20

What I found in Baldwin or what

32:23

I found in Morrison, what they

32:25

gave me let me know

32:27

like this is not the only

32:30

idea of God that

32:31

is out there for you.

32:33

I was watching this video

32:35

of James Baldwin and he says, I'm just

32:38

going to give you the direct quote, what he says, I don't

32:41

know what most white people in this

32:43

country feel. I can only include

32:45

what they feel from the state of their institutions.

32:48

I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or

32:50

not, but I know that we have a Christian church which is white

32:53

and a Christian church which is black. I know

32:55

as Malcolm X once put it, the most segregated

32:57

hour in American life is high noon on Sunday.

32:59

And so it's a great deal for me about a Christian nation.

33:02

It means that I can't afford to trust most

33:04

white Christians and certainly cannot trust the Christian

33:06

church.

33:08

I then have to ask you in light

33:10

of what Baldwin said because Baldwin left. He

33:14

grew up in black Christian church,

33:16

same as you, same as me. And

33:19

he, he hightailed it out of there. Why

33:22

did you hold on to Christianity in any

33:24

form? I mean, you, you eventually

33:26

would go back to black Christian

33:29

spaces.

33:30

What was the point?

33:33

For me,

33:35

I just knew that like going back

33:37

to the black church and I'm in a black progressive

33:39

church. I knew that like

33:42

giving a giving black faith

33:44

a chance to heal me and love me

33:47

was my obligation to the black people that

33:49

formed me. I

33:52

lean back to Baldwin. You know, he has a section

33:55

in Defy next time. There

33:57

still is nothing quite like the ethos.

34:01

of the Black Church space, when

34:03

those tired, weird souls declare the goodness

34:05

of the Lord. And

34:08

even though I lost

34:10

something in it, I still remember the sound.

34:14

I still remember the ethos.

34:17

And

34:18

that power is beyond

34:21

simply the Black

34:22

Church.

34:24

That is Black spirituality that

34:27

comes from the ancestral planes. That's beyond Jesus.

34:31

It is beyond just the Church. It

34:35

is the Black Spirit. That's

34:37

a thing that cannot be controlled. That's

34:40

a thing that cannot be contained

34:42

to one space, but a thing that continues

34:45

to call us back to ourselves as Black people

34:47

again and again and again, and tell me that

34:50

there is so much for you, young Black child,

34:53

that you do not have to lose any of yourself,

34:56

your Christianity

34:57

or your Blackness or your humanness. Like,

35:01

I'm gonna infuse it with a thing.

35:11

In many cases, our ancestors found hope

35:13

and the very thing meant to oppress them. They

35:16

clung to it as an act of resistance because

35:18

in it, they found the opposite of what their oppressor

35:21

tried to give them. Or to put

35:23

it in the Christian speak I grew up with, what

35:25

that institution meant for evil, God

35:27

turned to good. Growing

35:30

up, my faith was important to me, but

35:32

I didn't choose this to begin with. I was

35:34

born into it. So it was also almost

35:37

expected of me. And yes, I believe

35:39

it, but I'm glad I faced that question

35:41

from Vika, how can you hold on

35:44

to this thing that's been used to oppress you? Because

35:46

more than belief, that question

35:49

and the conversations that it started helped

35:51

me find something deeper, something true.

35:55

I'm not holding on to a dusty old book tailored

35:57

to control my behavior. I'm holding on

35:59

to the...

35:59

faith and the tradition of my ancestors,

36:02

and to their hope. I'm holding on to

36:04

what they found when they heard folks out in the fields

36:06

or in the church house singing about deliverance.

36:09

So yes, it's been tainted, and yes, some

36:11

churches are ready for that conversation and others

36:14

aren't. Some welcome Vika's

36:16

question and others are too afraid to answer it.

36:19

But also, for me, maybe

36:21

the question isn't how can I hold on to this thing

36:23

that's been used to oppress me. Maybe

36:25

it's how can I let it go? If

36:27

it brings peace to my mother, if it empowers

36:30

my grandmother and liberated her grandmother,

36:34

I'm not holding on to this thing so

36:36

much as this thing is holding us together.

36:44

You know, one of my favorite

36:47

songs, and it's because of my

36:49

grandmother, is,

36:52

you know, my grandma would always sing

36:54

the song, I feel like pressing

36:57

my way. You remember that

36:59

one? I feel like

37:01

pressing my way. I'm

37:04

on my way to

37:06

heaven. Lord, I

37:09

feel like pressing my

37:12

way. See, I love that

37:14

song

37:14

as a kid because

37:17

I knew what it made my grandma

37:20

feel, bro. That

37:23

song did something to

37:25

my grandma. It was like, I

37:27

want that. Whatever grandma I got, she'd be like,

37:30

she's shaking her hands up and down. She

37:32

started shouting, she started shouting, shaking her hands

37:35

up and down.

37:35

That point, I

37:38

wanted that. And

37:40

you know, I never see my grandma speaking

37:42

near tone, nor my daddy. That's

37:45

the thing. There were people

37:47

that I know, I know you don't speak in tones. But

37:51

you have something beautiful that I love.

37:59

of the point of holding on to any of this,

38:02

right? Dante finds something

38:04

beautiful. I find something true.

38:07

Not everyone finds that in a particular

38:09

faith system. But if you find

38:12

truth

38:12

or beauty or freedom, you hold

38:14

on to it, wherever you find it. There

38:17

was a song we used to sing when I was a kid. Give

38:20

me that old

38:20

time religion. It says it was

38:23

good enough for my mother. It was good

38:25

enough for my father. It was good

38:27

enough for my grandmother, Lord.

38:31

It's good enough for me.

38:35

JC, thank you so much for

38:38

bringing us the story. Thank

38:52

you, Gene. It was a pleasure to be on the show. And

38:54

that is our show. And we just want to give a quick

38:56

shout out to our Code Switch Plus listeners.

38:58

We appreciate y'all and thank you for being

39:00

subscribers. When you subscribe to Code Switch

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Plus, it means you get to listen to all of our episodes

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plus.mpr.org slash

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Codeswitch. You can follow us on Instagram

39:16

at MPR Codeswitch, all one word. This

39:19

episode was produced

39:20

by Skylar Swinson with help from

39:22

Max Friedman. It was edited by Lauren Gonzalez

39:24

and Cher Vincent. It was produced for Code

39:26

Switch by Jess Kung and edited by Courtney

39:28

Stein. And we would be remiss if we did not shout out

39:30

the rest of the Code Switch massive. That's

39:33

Christina Kala, Kumar Dhevarajan, Dalia

39:35

Mortada, Leah Dinella, Vierlin

39:38

Williams, Lori Lizarraga, B.A.

39:40

Parker, and Steve Drummond. Our art

39:42

director is LA Johnson. The audio

39:44

engineer for this week's episode was James Willits. As

39:47

for me, I'm Gene Dunby. I'm

39:49

JC Howard.

39:50

Be easy, y'all. See ya.